Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

The long-running Resident Evil film franchise (itself based on the equally long-running video game franchise from Capcom) gets a reboot with Welcome to Raccoon City, which ditches the emphasis on high-tech special effects and film star, Milla Jovovich, from the previous six movies, and tries for a more pure B-horror experience that is more in line with the original games.  It's obvious that writer-director Johannes Roberts has a lot of love for the video games, and throws in plenty of Easter Eggs that fans who grew up playing them are sure to love.  But much like the recent Ghostbusters: Afterlife, references and call backs alone are not enough to make a successful movie.  

In this movie's case, Roberts seems so bent on recreating locations and throwing in characters from the games that he forgot he was supposed to be making a horror movie here.  Even a B-Movie such as this needs some attempts at suspense, and this movie just doesn't do enough to appease anyone who might be walking in cold, or those fans who are looking for some genuine suspense to go with the callbacks to the video games.  The movie borrows the plots of elements of Resident Evil 1 and 2, which were released for the PlayStation back in 1996 and 98, respectively.  Many of the characters from those games make appearances, though they have an awkward habit of calling each other by their full names, so that the fans will know just who from the games the actors are supposed to be.  This bit of clunky dialogue gives a bad notion early on that the movie is all about fan service and little else, and never recovers.

The movie takes place during the course of one night, and tells of how an evil corporation known as Umbrella places the titular Raccoon City into the Zombie Apocalypse.  At the center of all the slouching, groaning zombies are siblings Chris (Robbie Amell) and Claire (Kaya Scodelario), who are estranged after all these years, due to Claire leaving her brother behind years ago.  Claire hitches a ride back into Raccoon City due to the news that the Umbrella Corporation is up to some shady business, and are then separated in the chaos.  The film then takes on a dual plot structure, with Chris exploring a creepy mansion with ties to the Corporation with tactical police officers Jill (Hannah John-Kamen), Richard (Chris Rook) and Albert (Tom Hopper) to look for some missing comrades, while Claire is partnered with rookie cop Leon (Avan Jogia) and walking police movie cliche Chief Brian Irons (Donal Logue), who screams his lines to the point that he comes across as a parody of a Police Chief from an 80s action movie that's been awkwardly inserted into a horror movie.

Fans of the games know these characters and hold advance knowledge, and it's likely that writer-director Roberts does as well, which is why he never bothers to build these characters here into anything memorable or well-written.  I can picture him sitting at his computer as he wrote up the script, dreaming of an audience filled with fans watching his movie, and patting him on the back for including these characters and moments that are a big part of many gamer's nostalgia.  Even someone like me who has had a passing history with the series (I was more of a Silent Hill guy back in the day when it came to Survival Horror.) has some memories that came flooding back when I was watching this.  But, what's the point of being accurate if you're not going to bother to go anywhere interesting, or fail to build to any memorable or frightening images?  

It must be said that the original games, or the more recent remakes that have come out on more modern consoles, have more tension to them than any of the lame and easily telegraphed jump scares that this movie can throw at audiences.  There are some cameos by a few of the fan-favorite monsters here, but much like the human characters, they don't amount to much, and they are brought to life with questionable effects.  Even the plot doesn't strike as hard as it should, as certain important elements such as the T-Virus are not given the weight that they deserve.  This, and many other reasons, help make this Resident Evil out to be nothing more than a mediocre nostalgia trip that respects the source material, but never creates a reason to care beyond that.

I actually think a more accurate film adaptation of the games could be highly successful, but Welcome to Raccoon City misses the mark severely, and simply comes across as a throwback that checks off some fan expectations, but never builds to anything worthwhile.

0 comments